


The Price of Redemption

by DinerGirl



Category: Outlander (TV)
Genre: Character Development, Flashbacks, Other, non Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-15
Updated: 2016-06-15
Packaged: 2018-07-15 06:35:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7211843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DinerGirl/pseuds/DinerGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At his dying brother's bedside, Jonathan Randall makes a promise to himself and his brother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Price of Redemption

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first bash at fan fiction having been a fic writer of original work for a while now. I'm so interested by the evil in BJR but am disappointed that the nuances of this evil were only partially examined. This is in the OL world but with a fair amount of my own artistic license. It's only meant to be conjecture so enjoy!

No man is born evil, he knew that, but Jonathan Randall wondered if a man could ever wash the stain from his conscience once it had been taken up & absorbed into its very fabric. He thought that in this lifetime it would be impossible, not when he thought of all the things he had done, all the pain and suffering he had caused. But, maybe, this could be a start in trying to repent for his sins, to seek atonement here on Earth while he still could. 

He thought back to his own childhood, to his family life in Sussex and the seemingly idyllic childhood that his parents had afforded to he and his two brothers. He thought too, of the awful secret those sun drenched memories held, thought of the cold preoccupation of his parents. He was desperate to please them, to prove that he could be as skilled a horseman as their beloved Edward or as kind as dear, sweet Alex. And yet, his childish yearnings soon turned to pain, a dull ache of reproach in his chest when he was seemingly ignored. For any other man, at any other point in life, this soon would have been cast off as childish nonsense as he grew and aged and became aware of the vagaries of life. But, for that fateful afternoon in 1719 when the seeds of pain and hate and loathing were sown only to leave him as the man he was now with armfuls of the most awful fruit. 

In the bed before him, Alex slept, breathing heavily, the slow wheezing filling the room. Clare had been and gone, leaving them alone. He had been so desperate for help he had even told her of the unit’s plans, had given up his own men in another awful act but, a necessary one none the less.  Jonathan’s head was swimming with panic and fear, myriad thoughts clattering together like some hellish galloping thing, come to drag him to hell. The injustice made it worse, made Jonathan more desperate than he had ever been in his life, too full of self-absorbtion to care before but now good, kind Alex lay before him, dying. His kind brightness slipping away, eaten up by disease. _How could there be a God, then?_ Jack thought. _How could there be a God who allowed men like Alex to die but sinners like him to live?_ He sat back, exhaled heavily himself and stood, walked to the fire. _Maybe,_ Jack considered, _that was the cruelty. Maybe there was no need for the flames of hell to destroy a man’s soul, maybe the stuff of living was enough._  

He knew too well of the hellish things on earth, had seen his own men slashed jaw to belly like sheep, burned and tortured and beaten to death by the highlanders, their limbs hung from trees as warnings. He had done those things himself. _And what,_ he thought, _was the weight of a man’s life worth? What was it worth when it had been so thoroughly wasted as his had been?_

Jonathan had entered the army determined to make his family proud at last, using his looks as a pretty bartering chip in the first couple of years he quickly rose through the ranks. He had no Sandhurst education like the other officers but he had charm and status and a sharp right fist that worked just as well. He had already seen the cruelty that life offered and was quickly hardened to it in the damp of Scotland. _Eat like the wolf or be eaten like the stray fawn, lost on the moor._ He had learned it then, cruelty, in the spring time of 1719, a mere fawn himself; 13 years old and a small sapling of a boy, all legs and arms and confusion. The stable hand had been an older, rougher lad from the village, 19 years old and tall, smelling of horses and sweat. It was a smell that Jonathan could place right then and there as though a horse had climbed the stairs and stood at the foot of the bed, mocking him. That scent had followed him all his life, into the dragoons and into his very soul. It - for he dare not call it anything else -  had begun with small things at first; his father would bid him to take the stable boy water and food and the stable boy would bid him to stay with a hard look, a tug to the ear. This bloomed into a slap on the cheek by the month’s end, a hand to the arse by the middle of June. Jonathan tried to struggle, to run away but he was small and weak, raised too politely to know otherwise; an easy catch for the stable hand. Jonathan was humiliated, filled with shame and the slick nausea of perverse lust. He would lie in his bed at night wracked by doubt, cast to sea by his confusion. There were girls in the village who were ever so pretty and Lord and Lady Darnley’s daughter Emma was quite something, he knew, with her blonde curls and bright blue eyes. But, then, the other thing; the roughness of a man’s hands, of the breath on Jack’s neck. It made him feel like his brother said women should make you feel only, the stable lad wasn’t a woman. Jack knew men could swing in the noose for the things he thought of and he made himself sick with shame.

The door clicked and he was brought back to the present, 25 years forward, to the small upper room in the Edinburgh house, to Alex’s breathing and his sweet, serene face. Jonathan looked over to the doorway. It was the kitchen maid; a small, mute girl who lay a tray on the table next to him and smiled as she left. He nodded his thanks, watched her red hair move in the candle light. 

Maybe Alex, in his infinite goodness, would once more prove to be Jack’s redemption. Maybe honouring Alex’s request was a second chance at the goodness that Jack had never found. Jonathan knew he was a desperately lonely man, a man who had longed for the touch and tenderness from another, the warm embrace of a person who would see the loneliness he could never show and was too ashamed to admit to, lest it made him weak, somehow less of a man. He was repulsed by what evil had done to him and others, numbed by the gore spattered milieu of war. He stood and stretched, having been sat by Alex’s bedside now for longer than he cared to remember. As he rose, he caught his reflection and found it to be as he expected; a man desolated by cruelty, numbed by pain, resigned to the dark. He wondered if he could ever find the light again or if Earth itself was really hell. He thought, for the first time in his life, of the responsibility he would soon have - a wife, a child - the life he thought a man like him could never have and yet, here it was, presented to him by the kindest man he had ever known - his own brother - dying. Alex was more deserving of that happiness than Jack ever was for that happiness was Alex’s. Mary loved Alex and would take Jack because she had to.

A lump formed in his throat and he fought it back. He thought of Mary, sleeping downstairs, and of the child that was due at any moment. Jonathan thought of the horror of the awful August day and the smell of horses and the pitcher of water falling over his feet. He thought of the smash of the plate and the feel of the stable boy’s hand on the back of his head and retched and wept for the small child he had been and the child in Paris he had hurt as though to make another feel what he had felt would quell the pain. Instead, he had felt worse and ruined a boy’s life for his own shame. _If anyone deserved to meet their maker and stand in austere judgement surely it was him?_

Jonathan shuddered, fearful for the child Mary carried, wishing away the horror of his own childhood and sending up a silent prayer to whatever God watched the Earth to help him in his duty, to protect Mary and Alex and the child. To stop the horror of corruption. He stretched his legs, stared out into the night. Jonathan looked down into the street, watched a woman pull a small, loping boy over the cobbles and thought of what a good childhood and a happy marriage should look like and realised he did not know. He could not imagine happiness or contentment but felt for the sake of them all, he must endeavour to try.


End file.
